After sweeping cinegoers across the world off their feet, the charm of South India’s biggest superstar Rajnikanth is swaying the Delhiites too with the actor’s latest release ‘Sivaji’ opening to packed houses in the city theatres.

‘Sivaji’, which hit cinema screens worldwide yesterday to an overwhelming audience response, has evoked tremendous curiosity among the cinegoers in Delhi, who are normally cold to films featuring regional superstars.

Trade sources said the cinema halls screening the Rajnikanth- starrer in the National Capital region- Delhi and Gurgaon was witnessing record crowds of cinegoers with a huge clamour for tickets of the movie.

The sources said the overwhelming response to the film in Delhi came as a surprise considering that the film was in Tamil with subtitles inserted for the benefit of non-Tamil audiences.

Also striking was the fact that the film was attracting not only South Indians, among whom Rajni has a huge fan following, but also a large number of North Indians and local Delhiites, many of whom were drawn to the theatres due to the tremendous hype around the film in recent weeks.

Going by the huge audience response for ‘Sivaji’, PVR cinemas, which is screening the film at its two audis in Gurgaon and one each in Naraina and Vikaspuri, is planning to double the number of audis screening the film from next week.

In fact, trade analysts say that the huge response generated by ‘Sivaji’ in Delhi, considering that it is releasing alongside the hugely-hyped Yash Chopra production ‘Jhoom Barabar Jhoom’, featuring an ensemble of Bollywood stars like superstar Amitabh Bachchan, his son and current teenage heartthrob Abhishek Bachchan, the perky Preity Zinta, the debonair Bobby Deol and the ravishing Lara Dutta, is an evidence of the huge fan following commanded by Rajnikanth among the Indian cinegoers.

Touted as the costliest Indian film to hit the silver screen in recent times, ‘Sivaji’ has been released over an estimated 850-900 screens worldwide, the largest for an Indian film.

In every country where the film has been released, tickets have already been sold out for the first two weeks, and even more in the case of Malaysia.